The answer could come down to a provision in campaign-finance regulation.<\/b>
\nWith the disclosure of a June 2016 email in which he welcomed direct assistance from the Russian government to help his father\u2019s campaign, Donald Trump Jr. leapt Tuesday from the frying pan of political danger into the fire of potential legal peril.
The president\u2019s eldest son became a central figure in questions about interference in last year\u2019s election after The New York Times revealed Monday that he met with a Russian lawyer after learning she had damaging information to offer about Hillary Clinton. In an email setting up the meeting, Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist who\u2019 d met Trump Jr. at a Moscow beauty pageant four years earlier, indicated that the information came from the Russian government.
The Crown prosecutor met with [musician Emin Agalarov\u2019s] father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government\u2019s support for Mr. Trump.
Trump Jr. replied with interest to what Goldstone\u2019s associates had to offer. \u201cIf it\u2019s what you say I love it especially later in the summer, \u201d he wrote. He eventually met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer Goldstone linked to the Russian government in a later email, on June 9,2016. He was accompanied by his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, now a top adviser to the president, and the campaign\u2019s then-chairman, Paul Manafort.
What If It’s All True?
From Trump Jr.\u2019s account to the Times, the meeting was a bust. Veselnitskaya purportedly offered no useful information about Clinton\u2019s candidacy. Instead, she shifted the conversation to the Magnitsky Act, an American law that sanctions top Russian officials for their alleged role in human-rights abuses, and Russian adoptions to American parents, which were suspended by Russian President Vladimir Putin in retaliation for Congress passing the law in 2012. For now, however, it matters less that the meeting wasn\u2019 t fruitful and a great deal more that it happened in the first place.
Most of the political discussion surrounding the Russia investigation has focused on the question of \u201ccollusion\u201d\u2014whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russians to help get the president elected. But that\u2019s not a relevant legal term in this context. Instead, a better way to view this matter may be through the lens of campaign finance. Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing any \u201cthing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any [federal] election.\u201d The statute also says no American shall \u201cknowingly solicit, accept, or receive\u201d any \u201ccontribution or donation\u201d from a foreign national in connection with an election.
Does that apply to any Trump campaign actions when it comes to Russia? Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel during the Obama administration, noted in a Just Security article on Friday that Congress passed the law following a foreign-donations scandal in the 1996 presidential election. He argued that Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who\u2019s leading the Justice Department\u2019s probe, could potentially bring charges against the president himself for public comments he made during the campaign\u2014including his July 2016 call for Moscow to find and release 33,000 deleted emails from Clinton\u2019s private email server. Trump could claim the Constitution protected his remarks on the campaign trail, Bauer pointed out, with one catch.
\u201cThis First Amendment defense is at least at the mercy of whatever facts are still uncovered about the extent of any \u2018collusion,\u2019 \u201d he wrote. \u201cBut even with just a little more in the way of fact, with the addition of detail to an already well-established outline, the Trump campaign\u2019s position is precarious. How strongly does the First Amendment protect a presidential nominee\u2019s mobilization of foreign government support for his candidacy\u2014support achieved through illegal activities?\u201d
More to the point Tuesday is whether Trump Jr. could be vulnerable under this federal election provision. Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law professor who specializes in election law, wrote that the Goldstone email exchange was \u201cpretty close to the smoking gun people were looking for.\u201d The president\u2019s son \u201cappears to have knowledge of the foreign source and is asking to see it, \u201d he added, noting that \u201csuch information can be considered a \u2018thing of value\u2019 for purposes of the campaign finance law.\u201d
Other legal minds contacted by The Washington Post and HuffPost had a similar assessment. \u201cThe conversation will now turn to whether President Trump was personally involved or not, \u201d Jens David Ohlin, associate dean of Cornell Law School, told the Post . \u201cBut the question of the campaign\u2019s involvement appears settled now. The answer is yes.\u201d Trump spokesman Mark Curello said in a statement Monday that the president \u201cwas not aware of and did not attend the meeting\u201d in June.
But the consensus was far from universal. \u201cAmbiguities in criminal statutes are supposed to be resolved against criminalization, \u201d Stephen Duke, a Yale University law professor, told Vox . \u201cThat is especially so where the statute allegedly punishes the receipt of information. If receiving information that Hillary was being helped by the Russians is a crime, so too would be receiving information that the Russians were helping Trump in the election.\u201d
The legal significance could also extend beyond the president and his son. Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, told me that the emails may be valuable for federal investigators looking into Kushner and Manafort. Both men have come under scrutiny in recent months for their Russia-related business dealings and their contacts with Russian officials during and after the campaign. According to the Times, government officials first learned of the June meeting when Kushner updated an incomplete form he had submitted to obtain a security clearance. The final email in the chain released by Trump Jr. shows him forwarding the entire conversation with Goldstone to Kushner and Manafort.
\u201cIf the emails are probative of anything, it\u2019s of any sworn statements [Trump Jr.] , or others, might have made to federal investigators or on paperwork signed under penalty of perjury, where the meeting might either have been omitted or mischaracterized, \u201d Vladeck said. Lying to federal investigators during an investigation is a felony offense.<\/p>\n

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